Investor interest in the streetwear space is growing rapidly. After Supreme joined forces with The Carlye Group, highly influential streetwear and youth culture title Highsnobiety has raised an USD 8.5 million Series A round led by London-based venture firm Felix Capital, with additional details on the deal remaining undisclosed. Highsnobiety plans to use the new funding to help scale its branded content, e-commerce and events businesses.

In 2005 Petrus Palmér co-founded the studio Form Us With Love straight out of design school in Sweden. By 2012, FUWL’s clients already included Ikea, Cappellini, and Muuto. It was hard to imagine how things could go better, but Palmér felt a nagging discontent in what he was doing. He was stuck between designing for the biggest mass market imaginable or for the 1% who could afford a USD 10.000 couch.

The future of brick-and-mortar bookstores has been in peril for at least a decade. But whether you are actually shopping for a book or not, you might actually find yourself wandering into a bookstore by accident. Fashion brands, from French icon Sonia Rykiel to New York City-based Warby Parker, or concept stores like Colette and 10 Corso Como are curating books not as objects to read but as objects of décor.

“I guess the reason I started my own beauty company was that I wasn’t patient enough to be a philosopher, nor tolerant enough to be an architect,” Aesop founder and creative director Dennis Paphitis once confessed. The son of Greek hairdressers started the company in 1987 from his hair salon in Armadale with a “quest to create a range of superlative products for the skin, hair and body”.

There's been a lot of talk in the agency industry about rising competition from consultancies such as Accenture, McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group. R/GA has stared this threat in the face and is challenging the consultancies at their own game. In an industry that’s quickly and constantly changing thanks to technological innovation and consumer behavior, R/GA chairman and CEO Bob Greenberg sees self-disruption as a key business operating principle, one that has served the company well in the past and will ensure its survival in the future.

With its own dedicated fromagerie, microbrewery and Michelin-calibre restaurant, it might be easy to forget you have come to watch the football when you are reclining in one of the premium lounges of Tottenham Hotspur’s new £750m stadium. The 61,000-seat behemoth will feature the longest bar in the country, heated seats with built-in USB ports, a glass-walled tunnel so you can see the players before the game and even a “sky walk” allowing fans to clamber over the roof of the arena.

In a market where creativity is a commodity, career opportunities lie in the ability to sell the dream and support the team. Daniel Bonner is Global Chief Creative Officer of SapientRazorfish. He has been working for the company for five years and provided creative leadership at AKQA prior to that for 15 years.

In the past, consulting firms' bread and butter has traditionally been large IT and business-transformation projects. Nowadays, project scopes increasingly require new skills, such as user experience, human-centered design, agile and more. Skill sets that have historically been offered by agencies.

What defines ‘lifestyle’ today and which brands are really defining it? The strategy of moving beyond products and services to own a larger slice of the customer’s identity has proven to be an excellent recipe for success. Today's leading lifestyle brands are the likes of Airbnb, Rapha and Tesla, which perfectly reflect people's busy, mobile and demanding lives. They touch upon the consumer's individual style and are influenced by the way we choose to live.

Chris Rowson is the head of design and group creative director at TBWA in New York, which is one of the most storied and successful creative agencies in the world. The firm has a knack for surprising, disruptive work, and Rowson has played a big role in many of the agency’s campaigns. Dropbox has sat down with Rowson to discuss where he finds creative inspiration, how he thinks about teamwork, and what advice he has for the next generation of creators.

Smartphones have altered our everyday life, digesting many longstanding spaces and rituals, and transforming others beyond recognition. The smartphone has become the signature artifact of our age. Less than a decade old, this protean object has become the universal, all-but-indispensable mediator of everyday life. Very few manufactured objects have ever been as ubiquitous as these glowing slabs of polycarbonate.

The newly appointed CEO of Wolff Olins, Sairah Asham, spoke to Co.Design about her new role as a CEO, the intersect of branding and technology and what digital sociology means and how it impacts the design industry.